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103: Alleviate Autumn Anxiety

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To listen to today’s podcast, scroll to the bottom of this post and click the triangular “play” button 🙂

When our oldest, Max, started kindergarten, he morphed from the enthusiastic, curious, good-natured boy we had known since the day he was born, and into a truly anxious child with frequent night terrors; in first grade he even sustained the loss of 20% of his body weight and was diagnosed with migraine at age 6.

Do you have an anxious kid, who’s worried about starting preschool or kindergarten, or a higher grade?

Have you been told all about the dangers of “summer slide,” the idea that it’s more important for kids to store facts from last year than to have a relaxed and enjoyable summer break?

Today, with the learning year just getting underway, we dig into why autumn anxiety beats out summer slide – at least, in these earlier grades when our kids are very young – as what to concern ourselves with as parents.

I share two ways to alleviate your child’s autumn anxiety; click weturnedoutokay.com/103 to listen and read more about those two ways!

We say that he was “allergic to school,” but now we see the bigger picture; in those early elementary grades, school could not provide Max what he needed to thrive.

In today’s episode I share two ways that you can alleviate your child’s autumn anxiety:

– recognize that you are in an equal partnership with your child’s teachers; don’t let them bully you into believing that your son or daughter is the problem.

With Max, I made this mistake for his first years of schooling – and I have a master’s degree in early childhood education, I truly was on an equal footing with his teachers, but I didn’t feel that way. As a result, I didn’t speak up for Max and his kindergarten and first grade years were years of true suffering for him.

Don’t let that happen to your child! If you need help figuring out what to say, go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact and I’ll help you out.

– treat your child with empathy, saying that you understand how hard it is to start school, be a steady presence for him or her.

It’s very tempting, as parents, to tell your child “it’s no big deal,” to belittle their feelings (we parents do this for a variety of reasons, but one that often comes up is because it is hard for us to open ourselves up again to the kind of pain that those early years bring on; it feels easier to tell your child “you’ll get over it” because to empathize means remembering our own first school experiences.)

Again, if you have a question about how to handle your child’s anxieties, go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact and ask your question – I’ll help explain what is going on inside your child’s head 🙂

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